Principal Market Operator

Responsibilities

• Provide subject matter expertise across multiple functional areas of Energy Markets, offering guidance on market trends and trading strategies.
• Offer mentorship and oversight to support the development and success of junior team members.
• Create and maintain up-to-date operating procedures, guidelines, and policies ensuring consistent understanding and quality of functional tasks performed by operations staff.
• Monitor, analyze, and investigate Tri-State’s asset performance in energy markets to identify trends, issues, and opportunities for improvement.
• Troubleshoot and continuously look for ways to improve situational awareness screens, software, and SCADA/EMS.
• Serve as a primary contact during system disturbances and market volatility events.
• Act as SME for day-ahead and real-time energy markets across ISO/RTO regions (e.g., CAISO and SPP).
• Translate market rule changes into operational procedures and trading adjustments.
• Ensure compliance with ISO/RTO tariff requirements and NERC standards while monitoring exposure to imbalance charges, uplift, and other operational risks.
• Partner with Risk Management to validate positions and constraints, and lead root cause analysis for market deviations and settlement discrepancies.
• Coordinate closely with Gas Power and Marketing, Resource Dispatch and Trading Market Analysis, and Settlements and regulatory groups to support efficient and proactive market participation.
• Support outage planning and transmission coordination.
• Support department execution of Tri-State business strategies related to short-term load forecasting, resource, and contract management, optimizing energy management operations across multiple electric market structures and Balancing Authority Areas.
• Represent the organization in ISO stakeholder meetings when required.
• Submit accurate resource bids/offers; manage electric and natural gas scheduling; process transmission, NITS, and gas transportation requests; report planned outages; provide short-term transaction data (including book-outs) for Settlements; and log key operational events across prompt-month and day-ahead periods while supporting Settlements checkout activities.
• Economic dispatch of Tri-State generation fleet, taking into consideration operating constraints such as fuel, emissions and greenhouse gas limits, along with the scheduling coordination and confirmation of planned and economic outages with plant management.
• Affirm that all power and gas-related contracts are administered within contract requirements, including reserve sharing group obligations.
• Affirm that monitoring of OASIS is performed for planned transmission outages and prepare contingency plans for serving Tri-State and customer load.
• Maintain compliance with all company policies and procedures and attain knowledge and remain knowledgeable of regulations, laws, standards, and best practices applicable to functional area.

Qualifications

• A minimum of seven (7) years of related progressive experience with an electric utility, with experience in the Marketing Operations area, and preferred, but not required, prior SPP, CAISO or other competitive wholesale power market experience.
• An advanced degree in Engineering, Business, Economics, Finance, Marketing or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of experience and/or education.
• Advanced knowledge of electric power and natural gas markets.
• Advanced knowledge of regional electric markets and transmission systems, including organized markets and bilateral markets.
• Advanced knowledge of SCADA/EMS.
• Effective communication skills, both verbal and written.